


The Truth

by TheNarator



Series: Fractals [4]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Fix Fic, Fix-It, Gen, Not Canon Compliant, Revenge, Stalking, and doesn't that eat you up, isn't canon compliant, it sure as hell eats me up, that a fic about vibe and the flash and jesse quick being heroes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2016-05-08
Packaged: 2018-06-05 02:11:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6685066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheNarator/pseuds/TheNarator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The truth will set you free, but that doesn't mean it won't hurt.</p>
<p>The one where Cisco is the Super IT Department and defeats Zoom because the Green Arrow asked him to. There may also be another reason.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Now You've Done It

**Author's Note:**

> *IGNORES CANON WITH THE INTENSITY OF A THOUSAND SUNS*
> 
> okay listen up! as far as this fic is concerned everything that happened after episode 6 of season 2 is a horrible fever dream and nothing we learned after that point counts. jay garrick is really jay garrick and jesse quick doesn't treat her allies like something she scraped off the bottom of her shoe. when harrison wells abuses people it's not funny, and no one thinks it is. the stupid explanation about a metahuman gene is stupid and also not canon. there's no such thing as speed drugs.
> 
> basically fuck every bullshit """reveal""" that happened after "enter: zoom."

He had to ask Felicity for help with the traffic lights, but otherwise Cisco pretty much defeated Zoom by himself.

He wouldn’t have done it if it weren’t for Oliver. Cisco had been designing suits, trick arrows and various other gadgets for the Green Arrow and his team for nearly two years now, so he was used to Oliver just casually making demands of him. On his last visit to Starling City Cisco had been delivering a new and improved design for the Canary Cry to Laurel, ready to make last-minute alterations if she wasn’t satisfied with it, when Oliver asked him for a favor.

Well, demanded a favor, but still.

“You need to do something about Zoom,” Oliver said without preamble, coming up directly behind Cisco while he was trying to work.

Cisco jumped, but quickly regained control of himself. “The Flash has it handled,” he said simply, echoing the words he’d been telling himself since the first fight between Flash and Zoom.

“He’s taking too long,” Oliver insisted. “He’s in over his head.”

“He’ll figured it out,” Cisco insisted, determinedly continuing to work. “He always does.”

“It’s been over a year,” Oliver pointed out, “he’s not figuring it out. Do something for him.”

Oliver had probably meant for Cisco to build something for Jay, something that would help him take away Zoom’s speed. The thing was, Cisco was a metahuman, and he already _had_ a power that could interrupt a speedster’s connection to the speed force. He reasoned that there was no point in building something to replicate a power he already had, so the more expedient route was to simply do it himself.

He told himself firmly that that was the only reason.

“Are you sure you wanna do this?” Felicity asked skeptically when he pitched it to her.

“It makes the most sense,” Cisco replied with a shrug. “Why put more on Jay’s plate when I can easily do this for him?”

“And this isn’t about . . .” Felicity looked worried, “you know?”

“No,” Cisco said confidently. “It’s not.”

He decided to set his trap in the middle of downtown mainly because he needed the roof of a tall building to snipe from. It was cool getting to use the word ‘snipe’ for one of his own plans, since normally he left that kind of stuff to Oliver and the other actual heroes that he knew, but he figured he deserved to have a little fun with this. He’d been building gadgets for various superheroes for years, so getting to do some hero work himself was exciting. He used Felicity’s program to clear the traffic away from a single street and put up a few construction signs to deal with anyone on foot, leaving a single city block completely devoid of cars or people. That left him with a clear shot at Zoom.

Luring Zoom there wasn’t particularly hard either. He’d learned a while ago how to use his powers to make it seem like a sound was coming from a specific place, and simply being present for one of Zoom’s fights with the Flash meant that Cisco had already detected his frequency. It was a simple matter of determining a counter frequency and then making it sound like it was coming from the middle of the street.

When Zoom arrived in the middle of the street he actually had his hands over his ears, and was looking around angrily for the source of the noise. When the sound stopped Zoom looked even more confused, but thankfully he stayed in place in the middle of the street. He didn’t even see the vibration blast Cisco aimed at his back coming.

Zoom went down, falling flat to the pavement with barely enough time to throw his hands out to break his fall. He rose shakily to his hands and then his knees, looking down at his palms in bewilderment at the lack of lightning. He looked around, clearly wondering where his attacker was hiding, but at that point the sirens of the cops Cisco had called about five minutes ago could be heard hurrying to the scene.

Just one thing left to do.

Both the Flash and Zoom had their own unique frequency, so it was easy to draw one without attracting the attention of the other. Now Cisco used a counter frequency to the Flash’s, throwing it into the middle of the street like he’d done before. Almost instantaneously Jay was there, fingers in his ears and looking wildly around until his eye lit on Zoom. By the time the police arrived, Flash had Zoom pinned against the nearest building, arms behind his back and face pressed against the brickwork.

As the cops boxed Zoom in with their cars and carefully made to arrest him, congratulating a very confused Flash as they did so, Cisco climbed down off the roof by the fire escape and made his way out of the alley with a spring in his step. Zoom was no longer a threat to the city, the Flash would be credited with his arrest, and no one would be the wiser as to Cisco’s involvement.

***

When Cisco got home, Dante greeted him at the door with a punch in the face. 

It was definitely not the welcome he’d been expecting. Not that he’d been expecting anything, since no one was supposed to know that he’d defeated Zoom, but still he felt that the universe owed him a decent rest of the day. He couldn’t remember anything he’d done to offend Dante, who wasn’t exactly the violent type on the worst of days, so all things considered getting his clock cleaned came as something of a surprise.

“What the fuck Dante!” Cisco yelled, clutching at his jaw as he stumbled backwards into the wall.

“Keep your voice down!” Dante hissed. “You want to whole house to hear you?”

“You hit me!” Cisco retorted, but lowered his voice none the less.

“I ought’a do worse than that,” Dante insisted, glaring angrily. To Cisco’s mild satisfaction he noted that Dante was nursing his hand.

“What did I do?” Cisco wanted to know. 

“You think I don’t know your handiwork by now?” Dante demanded. “Zoom’s been caught, but the Flash is all over the news claiming he didn’t do anything, that Zoom’s speed was gone when he got there. Nobody’s buying it, but I know damn well it was you!”

Cisco went red. Of course, just because the rest of the city wasn’t familiar with his powers didn’t mean that his family wasn’t. Technically Dante was the only one who knew he was a metahuman, but he’d helped Cisco train to get control of his powers, so he was pretty familiar with how they worked. If anyone could guess that Cisco had been the one to catch Zoom, it was Dante.

“That still doesn’t explain why you punched me!” Cisco accused.

“I was trying to knock some sense into you,” Dante spat. “I can’t believe you put yourself in danger like that! What if Zoom had seen you, huh? You’d be dead before you could even react!”

“He didn’t see me though,” Cisco protested, “I was fine. I beat Zoom, doesn’t that count for anything?”

“Not if you were willing to trade your life for it!” Dante told him, and Cisco averted his eyes. “What would we do if we lost you, huh? What would Mom do?”

Dante stood straight, glaring at Cisco, but the beginnings of tears glittered at the corners of his eyes. “You think she could survive losing another son to that monster?”

Cisco looked at the floor, trying not to let the memories of that night flood his mind. “I didn’t think of that.”

“No, you didn’t,” Dante said angrily. He advanced on Cisco again, and Cisco flinched, but instead of hitting him Dante pulled him into a tight hug. “You never think about yourself when other people are in danger, do you?”

“I’m sorry,” Cisco said, wrapping his arms around Dante in return.

“I’m sorry I punched you,” Dante conceded. “You just gotta think next time, okay?”

Cisco pulled back, nodding weakly. “Okay.”

Dante sighed. “Come on,” he said, taking Cisco by the shoulder. “Mom baked you a cake.”

“Why’d she bake me a cake?” Cisco wanted to know.

“It’s to celebrate Armando’s murderer being behind bars,” he explained. “I figure that makes it yours, so you get first dibs on the leftovers.”

“I’m just glad no one else knows it was me,” Cisco told him as they made their way to the kitchen. “I’m so not ready to come out of the closet about the whole metahuman thing.”

“Don’t worry,” Dante ruffled his hair. “I’ve been watching the news. As far as everyone else is concerned, it was the Flash.”

***

“It wasn’t the Flash!” Jesse insisted, pacing back and forth in front of her father’s desk.

“You’re sure?” he asked, his eyes following her as he leaned back in his desk chair.

“Positive,” she told him. “I was there; I know what I saw.”

“And what did you see?” Harrison asked interestedly.

He hadn’t exactly been pleased by the news that the Flash had finally caught Zoom; true it made the city safer, but it would only bolster the Flash’s credibility, meaning it increased the risk of someone looking too closely at the Particle Accelerator. This was to say nothing of the Metahuman Awareness Apps which were due to launch tomorrow; without an antagonistic speedster the unique Speedster Sensors were dropped as a selling point, which was sure to hurt the sales rates.

If Zoom’s capture had been the work of someone else though, then perhaps this might present an opportunity to discredit Jay Garrick once and for all.

“I was looking out the window,” Jesse recounted, “when I heard this noise. I saw Zoom show up with his hand over his ears, and then the noise stopped. Then there was this . . . blast of some kind, that came from a rooftop across the street. When the blast hit Zoom, the blue lightning that’s always around him vanished.”

“Did you see what caused the blast?” Harrison wanted to know.

Jesse nodded. “There was a boy on the roof. It came from him.”

“Can you describe him?” Harrison asked hopefully.

“I can do one better,” she said, grinning as she pulled out her phone. She tapped the screen a few times, then held it out for her father to see.

The picture wasn’t the best quality, having been taken with a phone camera, but he could clearly see a young man with longish hair sitting on the edge of a rooftop. Harrison took the phone from Jesse and enlarged the image so he could see the boy’s face more clearly; the angle wasn’t perfect, but he could definitely make out the distinguishing features.

“And you think he stopped Zoom,” he speculated, handing the phone back to Jesse.

“I’m sure of it,” Jesse concluded. “The Flash is telling the truth, he didn’t capture Zoom. It was this other meta.”

“How do you know he’s a metahuman?” Harrison asked. “He could have been using a weapon-”

“Did you see a weapon?” Jesse cut him off. “I’m telling you, this city has a new superhero. People deserve to know about this!”

Harrison considered for a moment, the beginnings of a plan blooming in his mind. “Why don’t you send me that,” he proposed, “and I’ll use STAR Labs’ facial recognition software to see if I can find him.”

Jesse’s face lit up. “Would you?” she asked excitedly.

Harrison smiled benevolently at her. “Of course,” he said, “if you feel that strongly about it.”

Immediately Jesse was coming around the desk to give him a hug, and he stood up from his chair to receive her into his arms. She squeezed him as tightly as her skinny arms would allow, burying her face in the front of his shirt, and he kissed the top of her head affectionately. Holding Jesse always made him feel wonderfully at peace with the world, and as she left his office smiling and waving back at him he couldn’t have been more satisfied with life.

Jesse was happy and pleased with him. Zoom, one of the biggest threats to Central City, was gone, meaning that no one would be wondering why STAR Labs wasn’t doing more to stop him. The Flash was being credited with a victory he hadn’t won, which would put him in a tight position when the truth came out, and Harrison Wells would be the one to expose him for the fraud that he was.

All he had to do was find this boy.


	2. You Can Run

The morning after Zoom’s defeat Cisco returned to his job at the CCPD to find the precinct buzzing with gossip. The city was still celebrating the defeat of Public Enemy Number One, and the Flash’s mysterious reluctance to take credit was the hot topic of conversation. Nobody knew why Jay wouldn’t want the city to think he’d caught Zoom; he’d been seen pinning Zoom to a wall, of course it had been him, so why didn’t he want everyone to know it?

“I think he’s worried something’s going to wrong,” speculated one detective as Cisco passed, trying to keep his head down.

“What makes you say that?” asked his partner after a sip of coffee.

“If Zoom gets free now everyone will resent him for getting their hopes up,” argued the first detective. “He’ll let us thank him after the bastard’s spent a few months in lockup without getting out.”

“Thank you Cisco,” said a voice behind Cisco head, making him jump.

“What?” Cisco said reflexively, whipping around and trying not to look guilty. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“For the speedster containment unit,” said Eddie, one of the friendlier detectives that Cisco worked with. They were on the metahuman task force together, and Cisco had designed a fair bit of anti-metahuman technology that had protected Eddie and his partner Joe in the field.

“What?” Cisco asked, before his brain caught up with his mouth. “I mean, yeah. That.”

“You finished it just in time,” Eddie reminded him with a warm smile. “If it wasn’t for you we wouldn’t have had anywhere to put him, and Flash’s victory would have been for nothing. I figured you deserve some credit for that, so thanks.”

“Yeah,” Cisco swallowed, “Flash sure is lucky, huh?”

“Damn lucky,” chimed in Joe, coming up behind Eddie with a tray of three coffees. He gave one to Eddie and one to Cisco, then sipped his own thoughtfully. “A little too lucky if you ask me.”

“We’re all a team here,” Eddie reminded them, grinning. “We’re all lucky to have each other.”

Joe shook his head. “It’s more than luck,” he said. “There’s something else going on here, something we’re not seeing.”

Cisco frowned worriedly. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I think Flash is telling the truth,” Joe told the two of them. “If he could take away Zoom’s speed he’d have done it before now. There’s gotta be another explanation.”

“What, like another metahuman?” Eddie wondered.

“What makes you think it’s a metahuman?” Cisco wanted to know. “It could have been someone with a weapon of some kind.”

“Cisco, if anyone could come up with a weapon that could stop Zoom it’d be you,” Joe assured him, smiling knowingly. “It’s a meta, and I don’t trust them.”

“Why not?” Eddie asked. “If you’re right then this person took out Zoom, wouldn’t that make him one of the good guys?”

“Then why hasn’t he come forward?” Joe pointed out. “Why blame it on the Flash?”

“Maybe they’re shy?” Cisco offered weakly.

“Or maybe they’re up to something.” Joe concluded.

Cisco went through the rest of his day with a lingering sense of unease. Joe was the best detective in Central City; if he put his mind to finding out who had really beaten Zoom Cisco wasn’t entirely sure he’d fail. While working on the metahuman database Cisco kept one eye on Joe, but he and Eddie seemed content to work on their current caseload. Still, he supposed it wasn’t real police work to go looking for a metahuman who hadn’t hurt anyone yet. If Joe were going to launch his own investigation, he’d do it on his own time. Cisco would have to be more careful from now on.

Not that he anticipated using his powers to fight crime again. The fight with Zoom had been a one-time thing, and he had no intention of becoming a costumed crusader like the Flash. With any luck the trail would go cold, and Joe would be forced to give up on the idea of finding him. Cisco just had to keep his head down until then.

***

Cisco returned home that evening mentally and emotionally exhausted. He’d spent the whole day worrying about Joe, and trying to distract himself from worrying about Joe by throwing himself into his work. He’d gotten a lot done on the database, but this fresh source of anxiety on top of how anxious he usually was while working on the database had left him completely drained.

One of Cisco’s jobs at the precinct, along with supplying anti-metahuman tech, was to maintain a list of all the known hostile metas in the city. The key word, though, was “hostile,” and there were plenty of metas that Cisco knew who just wanted to fly under the radar. Those metas had to be protected, and hence had to be kept out of the database, but the end result was that Cisco always felt it was desperately unfinished. He’d been wrong about metas before, after all, and on that occasion he’d been wracked with guilt at leaving his coworkers at the precinct unprepared.

As he sat down at his desk at home and powered up his computer he considered again the possibility of making a ‘potential metas’ list within the database. If he persuaded the police that the powers belonging to the innocent metas he knew were purely theoretical then he might be able to prepare them without . . .

Cisco’s screen went black.

He frowned at it, tapping at the keys to see if it had merely gone back into sleep mode. He’d taken it apart and rebuilt it just last week, so there shouldn’t be any problems with it, but the screen remained stubbornly blank. To make matters stranger he suddenly realized that his webcam was on, even though he was sure he had left it off.

“What the-” he said, starring at the light that meant the cameras was running, before the blank screen was abruptly replaced by a video feed.

It was not, however, the feed from his webcam.

“Hello Mr. Ramon,” said Harrison Wells, sitting at what Cisco supposed to be his desk at STAR Labs with a placid smile on his face.

“Dr. Wells?” Cisco asked in disbelief. “How did you . . . why did you . . . what?”

Wells’ smile widened. “I imagine this is quite confusing for you,” he speculated. “You’re probably curious as to the reason for this call.”

“You mean the reason why you hacked my computer so we could skype?” Cisco retorted. “Yes I am very curious about that!”

“Well, in the most practical sense, the reason for all that is that I want to offer you a job,” Wells said simply.

“I already have a job,” Cisco informed him. Surprise and confusion were swiftly fading beneath anger, and he had half a mind just to close his laptop and then tape a sticker over the webcam in the morning. “I like it.”

“Not as much as you’ll like working at STAR Labs,” Wells assured him. “We have top of the line facilities, cutting-edge technology, and I have some very interesting projects for your to work on.”

“Not interested,” Cisco said firmly.

“Oh c’mon,” Wells wheedled, “it’s candy land for someone like you.”

“Someone like me?” Cisco repeated. “What do you know about me?”

“I know you’re brilliant,” Wells began, and Cisco couldn’t help the little thrill of pleasure that sent through him. He knew, intellectually, that Wells was bad news. That didn’t stop him being the smartest man alive, or stop that fact from making his praise extremely satisfying.

“How do you-” Cisco tried, but Wells cut him off.

“I’ve seen your work on the speedster containment unit,” he went on. “It’s genius, really, I couldn’t have done better myself.”

“Especially since you didn’t even try,” Cisco spat.

Wells tilted his head as though in concession. “Fair enough,” he admitted, “but you’ve done admirably in my place.”

“Thanks,” Cisco muttered, “but I’m still not-”

“So admirably,” Wells went on as though he hadn’t spoken, “that I recognized your work.”

Cisco’s stomach dropped. No, Wells couldn’t possibly know that. He’d been _careful_ , and no one had found him out in nearly three years. It _couldn’t_ be.

“You, Mr. Ramon, are Vibe,” Wells said, and with those words he made Cisco’s heart clench in fear. “The mysterious freelance inventor I’ve heard both so much and so little about.”

Cisco swallowed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Of course you do,” Wells corrected. “You like to keep your name out of things, but your work is sold by Palmer Tech, Mercury Labs, pretty much everyone. Except of course-” he paused as though for dramatic effect, “-me.”

“I don’t wanna work for you,” Cisco told him, and they both knew he wasn’t just talking about the job.

“Why not?” Wells wanted to know.

“Because I hate you,” Cisco said honestly. It felt oddly freeing, to just say it, and let Wells think of him whatever he liked.

Wells, however, didn’t look the slightest bit perturbed. He simply smiled patronizingly, like a father looking down upon a small child, and it made Cisco’s stomach roll.

“And why is that?” Wells asked.

“Because the Flash was right,” Cisco explained. “The particle accelerator created the metahumans. _You_ created them, and then rather than trying to help them you used people’s fear of them to turn a profit.”

Wells frowned exaggeratedly. “Them?” he said in mock confusion. “Don’t you mean, ‘us’?”

Cisco hadn’t thought it was possible to be any more afraid than he had been, but suddenly icy adrenaline dumped itself into his veins and his skin began to prickle. Wells knew about his freelancing, fair enough, but he couldn’t possibly know about-

“You,” said Wells slowly, “are the metahuman who defeated Zoom.”

Cisco took a deep breath. How deep had Wells looked into him? How much did he know? Did he have any proof?

At last Cisco chose not to deny it, or rather to only deny part of it. “How do you know I’m a meta?” he challenged. “I could have been using a weapon. Like you said, I’m-”

“Brilliant?” Wells finished for him. “Not brilliant enough. You were seen.”

“What?” Cisco demanded. “How? By who?”

“I could tell you,” Wells grinned, “I could tell the whole city, in fact. Or I could convince my source to bury the information so that no one would ever know.”

“Why would you do that?” Cisco asked warily.

“Because you don’t seem to want people to know,” Wells said innocently. “You went out of your way to pin it on the Flash, so I assumed you wanted to preserve your anonymity.”

Cisco frowned skeptically. “You would do that?”

“Of course,” Wells promised, but his tone was mocking. “I wouldn’t expose one of my _employees_  to public scrutiny to serve no purpose.”

Cisco grit his teeth. “So you’ll bury it as long as I agree to work for you.”

Wells shrugged. “Your words, not mine.”

Cisco looked down, blinking back the first prickling of tears. He should have known better than to put himself at risk like this. He should have know that there were more dangerous enemies than Zoom out there.

“Oh, don’t be sad,” Wells teased cruelly. “You can’t build anything else for Tina McGee and Ray Palmer, but you can keep building toys for your friends in the masks if you like.” Cisco looked up, shocked, and Wells gave him an unimpressed look. “I made the connection between Vibe and the Green Arrow years ago.”

Cisco tried to think, tried not to panic. “Can I have some time?” he asked. “To think it over?”

Wells frowned. “I am not a patient man, Mr. Ramon.”

“Please,” Cisco begged, “I just need a little time.”

“The clock’s ticking,” he said simply, the threat implicit in his words and his tone. “Don’t keep me waiting.”

With that the screen went black, and after a moment displayed Cisco’s desktop once more.

***

Watching the news had become a singularly frustrating experience for Jesse Wells. There was only one subject being covered and that was Zoom: his defeat, his capture, his containment and the aftermath of the battle where he’d been taken down. There was no footage of the battle, only the eyewitness accounts of the officers who had made the arrest, and they’d all been dragged out to share their stories. The events of the fight itself were a mystery though, so every new station was reporting a wildly different version of it.

The thing that made it all so infuriating was that none of them had it right.

They all seemed to think that it was the Flash who had defeated Zoom, but Jesse _knew_  that was not the case. She had happened to be at the window looking down at the street, and so it was only by luck that she’d been able to witness the extremely brief fight. It hadn’t been the Flash who had stolen Zoom’s speed long enough for him to be captured, it had been another meta, and Jesse had seen the whole thing.

To Jay Garrick’s credit, in Jesse’s opinion, he had refused to accept the praise and accolades that he was being showered with for a victory he hadn’t won. He didn’t understand what had happened -- he hadn’t seen what Jesse had seen -- but he knew that he hadn’t defeated Zoom and wouldn’t claim that he had. Not that the mainstream media cared; they had all deemed him too modest to tell his own story and were cheerfully broadcasting their own version of events, while ignoring the one person who was actually telling the truth.

It was absolutely insufferable.

“Can you believe this?” Jesse asked her father as he came into the living room, where she was stretched out on the couch watching TV.

“Hm?” said her father, distracted but still his usual cheerful self.

“The way the media’s covering Zoom’s defeat,” Jesse clarified, muting the TV in disgust. “They’re not even listening to the Flash’s side of the story!”

“And what’s his side of it?” her father inquired, folding himself into his favorite chair.

“The truth,” Jesse insisted, sitting up straight in agitation. “He didn’t do it, and he says he didn’t do it, but everyone’s saying he did!”

“Yes, well, the public do enjoy their hero,” her father said in distaste.

Jesse frowned. She had tentatively decided to forgive her father for hiding the true origin of the metahumans from her, and she still wasn’t sure how he ought to make amends for that, but his dislike of the Flash was something she could no longer tolerate. She sniffed pointedly and turned away from him, unmuting the TV so she could ignore him more obviously.

Her father sighed, then reached over and took the remote out of her hand to switch the TV off.

“They’ll continue to attribute Zoom’s capture to the Flash until they have someone else to pin it on,” he offered.

Jesse shook her head. “Someone should at least be _trying_  to find the truth.”

Her father opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again. He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, contemplating her with his head tilted to one side, until at last he seemed to reach a conclusion.

“Why not you?” he asked.

Jesse blinked. “Me?”

“You,” her father repeated. “You witnessed the event, and you have a picture taken during the fight, something the media’s been dying for. You’re exactly what they need.”

“You think I should come forward with my story?” Jesse realized.

“Why not?” her father wanted to know. “If it bothers you so much then correct them.”

Jesse considered this. “Who would I go to with it?” she inquired. “Which media outlet?”

“All of them,” her father replied. “I’ll call a press conference; you can tell _everyone_  what you saw.”

“Really?” Jesse asked, and at her father’s nod she leaped up and dashed over to give him a hug. “Thank you!”

“Think nothing of it,” her father said, smiling indulgently. “After all, people deserve to know.”

“It’s more than that,” Jesse said as she began to pace around the living room. “This meta, he saved everyone, and he’s not getting any credit for it. We give the Flash a lot of attention and all of it is deserved-” here she gave her father a hard look, daring him to disagree, but he said nothing and kept his expression blank, “-but we have a new hero and he deserves to have his story told. He probably doesn’t want to seem like a glory hound by coming forward himself, but that just means it’s our job to find him.”

Jesse turned back to her father, frowning anxiously. “Did STAR Labs facial recognition software identify him yet?”

“I’m still working on bringing his name to light,” he replied with a strange smile.

Jesse shrugged. “Well if we put his picture out there someone’s bound to recognize him,” she reasoned.

Her father’s strange smile got bigger. “He can’t hide forever.”

Jesse grinned at him. Her father seemed enthusiastic about this like he rarely was for public service projects, and she couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps this was an attempt to make amends. Maybe the differences between him and the Flash couldn’t be reconciled, but he could help this new hero and in doing so help Central City. He could make up for the Particle Accelerator. He could show the city that the metahumans he had created weren’t all bad. He could be the type of person who worked with heroes.

He could be a hero too.


	3. But You Can't Hide

After being presented with Wells’ ultimatum, Cisco slept only fitfully that night. His dreams were full of old vibes, times he’d seen a metahuman hurting someone and been powerless to do anything about it. He saw Sand Demon holding a woman up by the throat, ready to kill her while the Flash was incapacitated by a concussive bomb. He saw Dr. Light robbing a bank, blasting a security guard out of her way, heedless of the picture she was presenting as she threw him roughly into a stone wall. He saw Zoom rampaging through the city, killing indiscriminately and eventually coming to a stop right in front of Armando. _Cisco_ , Armando called, _Cisco, Cisco-_

“Cisco!” came Dante’s voice, startling him out of sleep.

“What?” Cisco jerked awake, nearly falling out of bed. “What happened?”

“Get up,” Dante ordered, and for a moment Cisco struggled to place his tone. He blinked his eyes blearily open to find Dante peering down at him, his brow knit together and his lips pursed.

He didn’t look angry though. He looked . . . scared.

“What’s wrong?” Cisco asked, sitting up and rubbing his eyes.

“See for yourself,” Dante instructed. “Go look at Central City Picture News’ website.”

Cisco stumbled out of bed and did as he was told.

“I managed to change the channel before anyone saw it on the news downstairs,” Dante said as Cisco typed in the web address.

“What could be so-” Cisco began, and then he stopped.

The first story on the front page of the website was titled “Eyewitness to Zoom’s Defeat Comes Forward.” Accompanying it was a picture, obviously taken hurriedly with a phone camera, but none the less very clearly of Cisco himself.

“It’s all over the news,” Dante explained as Cisco skimmed the article. “Practically every station’s running it. There’s going to be a goddamn manhunt for you Cisco, _everyone’s_  going to want to find you. It’s amazing the police aren’t busting down our door!”

Cisco went back to his bedside stand to retrieve his phone, and sure enough there were four missed calls from Joe.

“This is bad,” Cisco whined as he sank back onto the bed. “This is very, very bad.”

“No shit,” Dante replied, looking just as terrified as Cisco felt. “What are we gonna do?”

Cisco thought for a moment, trying not to panic. “Who was the eyewitness? Who took the picture?”

Dante sat down in Cisco’s desk chair and began to skim the article. “You’re not going to believe this,” he said after a moment, and it sounded like his fear had momentarily been replaced with anger.

Cisco frowned. “Who is it?”

Dante turned to him, a look of fury and disgust on his face.

“It’s Jesse Wells. Harrison Wells’ daughter.”

***

Finding Jesse Wells wasn’t, in fact, all that difficult. She was still in school after all, and it was the same school where Cisco had gotten his engineering degree. He knew the place, so sneaking in wasn’t hard as long as he vibrated at a frequency that couldn’t be picked up by the security cameras and hid his hair under a hat. The metahuman awareness apps had come out the other day, but he’d already built something to keep them from detecting him, as well as all the other metas he’d distributed them to. Between his powers, his beanie and his Cloakpin Device getting onto the campus was easy, and cornering Jesse as she made her way along the side path between the science and history buildings wan’t any harder.

“Hello Miss Wells,” he said as he stepped out onto the stone walkway.

Jesse started in surprise. “Who are-” she began, but Cisco pulled off his hat and let his long hair fall around his face, and her eyes widened in recognition.

“You,” she breathed.

“Me,” Cisco confirmed. “We need to talk.”

“You’re really here!” said Jesse excitedly. “You . . . you’re the man who saved Central City!”

“That’s certainly what everyone’s saying,” Cisco replied tersely.

“Sorry, I just-” she hid her grin behind one hand, as though her innocent act would fool anyone. “You’re _here!”_

“That I am,” Cisco retorted impatiently. “And the Savior of Central City needs your help.”

“Anything,” Jesse said immediately, wide eyed eager. Mocking him. “What can I do?”

“You need to call another press conference,” Cisco instructed.

Jesse nodded hurriedly. “Done,” she said, “just tell me what you need everyone to know.”

“Good,” Cisco smiled, and he knew it probably looked a little cruel but he wasn’t in any mood for her and her father’s games. “They need to know that you’re a liar.”

Jesse looked taken aback. “What?”

“Recant your story,” Cisco ordered. “Tell them you were wrong. You’re very sorry, but I’m just a regular guy who had nothing to do with Zoom’s capture.”

“But-” Jesse sputtered. “That’s not true! I saw it!”

“So you’re the ‘source’ huh?” Cisco looked her up and down appraisingly. “How convenient for daddy that you just happened to be watching. Who’d you buy that picture off of anyway?”

Jesse blinked at him, in almost genuine-seeming confusion. “I don’t understand-”

“Cut the crap,” Cisco spat. “I know your dad’s making you do this, but he said he’d give me time!”

Jesse shook her head, perhaps in denial or maybe just to clear it. “My dad called the press conference, yes,” she explained. “He helped me, but he didn’t make me. And I didn’t buy that picture, I took it with my phone.”

“Tell me another one,” Cisco scoffed. “Look it’s been less than twelve hours, alright? Just tell him I need more time.”

“I don’t know what you mean!” Jesse protested, a little angry now. “I’m not doing this because of my dad, I just thought people deserved to know!”

Cisco stared at her. She was . . . telling the truth. She honestly had seen him fight Zoom, and by sheer coincidence she’d been someone inclined to tell Harrison Wells. She didn’t know about the deal.

Clearly the universe just hated him.

“So, let me get this straight,” Cisco said, struggling to hold in his temper. “You saw someone defeat Zoom entirely from a hiding spot, lure the Flash to the scene so that it would look like he did it, leave without so much as talking to the police, and generally go out of their way to avoid being spotted, and you decided to just _tell the entire city?”_

Jesse gaped at him as though in disbelief. “You . . . you _wanted_  the Flash to take credit?”

“Yes!” Cisco snapped.

“Then why not just tell him?” Jesse asked.

“I didn’t want him to know it was me,” Cisco explained heatedly. “I didn’t want _anyone_  to know it was me!”

“Why not?” Jesse demanded. “You defeated the most dangerous man in Central City, don’t you want the recognition?”

“That is the _opposite_  of what I want!” Cisco shouted, then hurriedly lowered his voice. They were still in a public place, after all, and anyone could decide to take this path at any time. “Look, just tell the press you made a mistake, okay?” he asked plaintively.

Jesse shook her head. “I didn’t make a mistake,” she insisted, “and I didn’t lie. I’m not going to recant; you deserve to have your story told.”

“But I’m _asking_  you to!” Cisco protested. “I don’t want my story told, doesn’t that count for something?”

Jesse bit her lip, looking conflicted. “But,” she argued, “the Flash gets all this attention. It’s not fair-”

“How is it fair that I don’t get to decide?” Cisco demanded. “The Flash _likes_  the attention, but I don’t!”

“He doesn’t do it because he likes attention,” Jesse corrected defensively. “He does it because people need a symbol of hope. You did this for Central City, because they needed a hero. They still need you!” 

Cisco let out a small, frustrated noise, trying not to feel guilty. “Haven’t I done enough for them already?”

“You put yourself out there, you can’t just take it back,” she warned, and now Cisco could see a dangerous glint in her eye. She was gathering self-righteousness around her like a shield, and Cisco knew this was his last chance to get through to her.

“Shouldn’t it be my choice?” he pleaded. “Haven’t I earned the right to choose? If nothing else, can’t being the Savior of Central City buy me that?”

“I’m not going to lie,” Jesse concluded, and Cisco could almost _see_  her defenses slamming shut. “I’m not going to recant my story, and I’m not going to help you hide.”

With that she turned on her heel and marched back out of the alley, leaving Cisco staring hopelessly after her.

***

By the time he reached home Cisco had another three missed calls from Joe, and one from Captain Singh. Joe had left a message that he was too afraid to listen to, but he knew that if he didn’t come into work Joe would eventually just come to the house. Some part of him knew that Joe was just worried, but he couldn’t shake the memory of Joe’s suspicion as he collapsed onto the bed and tossed his phone onto the nightstand.

When his phone began to buzz again Cisco had half a mind to just roll over and ignore it, but he picked it up anyway to discover that it wasn’t Joe calling him this time.

“Oliver?” Cisco said quizzically, sitting up.

“You know that we get the Central City news channels here too, right?” Oliver asked, by way of answer. “Felicity monitors them pretty close actually.”

“Oh,” said Cisco tentatively. “I guess you know then, huh?”

“That you went into the field and fought Zoom by yourself?” Oliver replied. “Yeah, Cisco, I know.”

“You told me to do something about it,” Cisco reminded him.

“I meant build something for Jay to use,” Oliver protested, frustration forcing its way through stoicism.

“You should have been more specific-”

“You knew what I meant Cisco,” Oliver told him firmly. “You have no combat training, no experience; you’re not ready for field work. You could’ve been killed!”

“But I wasn’t!” Cisco protested. “It all worked out!”

“You call this media circus everything working out?” Oliver asked.

Cisco winced. “Well, I didn’t die.”

“Now is not the time to be using the end to justify the means,” Oliver warned.

“You make it sound like I killed someone,” Cisco groused.

“Are you telling me you weren’t tempted?” Oliver demanded. “That the thought didn’t even cross your mind?”

“Never,” Cisco lied. 

“Cisco, you and I both know that this was about Armando-”

“If it was about Armando I would have done it over a year ago,” Cisco shot back, “but you and Dante said no. I did this because it needed doing, and if you can’t appreciate that then I don’t know what to tell you!”

With that he pressed the End Call button viciously and nearly threw his phone across the room in agitation. What right did Oliver have to judge him, after everything Cisco had done for him? Cisco had taken his advice unquestioningly for the entire time they’d known each other, putting off dealing with his brother’s killer just because Oliver deemed him to emotional to handle Zoom properly. Now Oliver just wanted to casually ask him to deal with Zoom, after all this time, and expected him not to jump at the chance to do it himself? Oliver Queen was one to talk, after all the villains from his own past that he had faced; he had no right to scold Cisco like a naughty child for saving Central City.

Cisco stood up, shoving his phone angrily into his pocket, and headed for the door. Maybe it was a risk to go outside, but he couldn’t stay here another minute.

***

If going outside was a risk then returning to the very rooftop where he’d been photographed firing vibration blasts at speedsters was patently moronic. None the less Cisco found himself on the rooftop once more, dangling his legs over the side and taking great swigs from a bottle of tequila. He was feeling pleasantly buzzed, but it wasn’t quite enough to erase the memory of Harrison Wells’ smug smile, so in his opinion he wasn’t nearly drunk enough.

There were, of course, some images that tequila could never make him forget, but he’d long since grown used to those.

Suddenly Cisco felt a rush of wind blowing his hair around, and in a flash of gold lightning Jay Garrick was standing on the roof at his side.

“Hey there Flash,” Cisco greeted, smiling wanly up at him, “fancy meeting you here.”

Jay frowned. “How much have you had to drink?”

“Not enough,” Cisco replied, then took another swig. “How’d you find me?”

“Been looking all over for you, kid,” Jay explained, coming to sit on the edge of the rooftop beside him.

“Everyone seems to be,” Cisco replied resignedly. “Guess I should apologize, huh?”

“Why would you need to apologize?” Jay laughed.

“Well Zoom was your nemesis,” Cisco speculated. “I took away your chance to beat him. Doesn’t that feel like a let down?”

“I’m just glad he’s gone,” Jay assured him.

They sat quietly together for several minutes after that. Cisco offered Jay the bottle and he held up a hand in refusal, but made no comment when Cisco took another swig for himself.

“I take it your not enjoying the attention,” Jay broke the silence at last.

 “If this is what it’s like to be their hero I’m sorry I pinned the whole Zoom thing on you,” Cisco said drearily. “Wouldn't wish this on my enemies.”

Jay waved a hand. “I’m used to it.”

Cisco offered him the bottle again, but Jay shook his head. “Damn boy scout,” Cisco grumbled.

“I can’t get drunk,” Jay told him, “speedster’s metabolism; I burn it off too fast.”

Cisco made a face. “Oh man, that sucks,” he commiserated.

Jay nodded resignedly. “That’s the superpower lottery for you,” he said. “It doesn’t give without taking back.”

Cisco thought back to his first few months of vibes, before he’d learned to control it better and they’d stopped hurting so bad.

“Can’t argue with that,” he said dully.

There was another lull in the conversation, during which Cisco felt that Jay was waiting for him to say something. He didn’t know what Jay wanted, but he was a little drunk and he had a tendency to overshare when inebriated. He said the only thing that came to mind.

“I just didn’t think this many people would be yelling at me, you know?” Cisco admitted. At Jay’s quizzical look he went on. “My brother’s mad at me for risking my life, the Green Arrow’s mad at me for not following orders, Jesse Wells is mad at me-”

“Why’s she mad?” Jay wanted to know.

“Hell if I know,” Cisco scoffed. “Something about me being a symbol of hope. Seems to think I should be grateful for the recognition or something.”

“Heard that one before,” Jay said, and there was a note of bitterness to his voice.

“I just-” Cisco hesitated, searching for the words, “-I just feel like I’m being punished.”

Jay nodded. Cisco didn’t know that he really understood, but his solidarity was comforting anyway.

“So everyone’s mad, huh?” Jay surmised.

“Pretty much,” Cisco confirmed.

“So,” Jay said carefully, “how about I be the person in your life who’s not mad at you?”

Cisco hesitated a moment, searching Jay’s face for some sign of his motive, but there was nothing there but sympathy and understanding. Maybe he really did get it. Somehow that made him feel even worse.

“Would it make you feel any differently if I told you Zoom killed my brother?” Cisco asked, trying to keep his tone neutral.

Jay let out a little laugh through his nose. “If that’s the case I’m doubly not mad at you; in fact I’m proud of you for doing it,” he said seriously. “That takes . . . well, it takes a lot.”

Cisco wasn’t entirely sure Jay knew what he was saying, or why Cisco thought this information would change his opinion.Still, knowing that the Flash was proud of him felt nice, even nicer than knowing Harrison Wells thought he was brilliant. They sat in companionable silence for another half hour, watching the sun set over the skyline of Central City, and for the first time in days Cisco felt like it was possible for everything to be alright again.

Somehow.


	4. Who You're Messing With

Cisco knew that if he missed any more work he’d be in danger of losing his job, but he just couldn’t bring himself to face his friends at the precinct just yet. The fact that he was badly hung over didn’t help; he had vague memories of Jay running him back home the previous evening, but his head was throbbing painfully and the first thing he did upon getting out of bed was head to the bathroom to throw up. He dragged himself into a cold shower, which served to wake him up somewhat, then went back to his room to flop into his desk chair.

Just as he was contemplating what to do with his day rather than facing his disappointed coworkers, his phone rang. He winced, picking it up and expecting to see Joe making a nineteenth call perhaps culminating in a fourth voicemail, but the screen displayed a number that Cisco didn’t recognize.

“Hello?” he said cautiously.

“Hello Mr. Ramon,” said the oily voice of Harrison Wells. “We have some things to discuss.”

“I’ll say,” Cisco hissed, letting indignation cover the jolt of fear. “You were supposed to give me time to think!”

“I warned you, I’m not a patient man,” Wells repeated blithely.

“Twelve hours!” Cisco retorted. “Not _even_  twelve hours! You didn’t even let me _sleep_ on it-”

“I needed to get my point across,” Wells cut him off. “I get what I want; this is what happens when you defy me. I hope you’ll take this lesson to heart.”

“I think you’re missing something here pal,” Cisco snapped. “You’ve lost your leverage. Or did you forget that my secret identity was the only bargaining chip you had?”

“Don’t worry,” Wells replied, and Cisco could practically hear the smile in his voice. “I haven’t forgotten.”

“Then how do you-”

“It’s not over yet,” Wells interrupted, and there was something perversely comforting in the reassurance. It made Cisco feel like he was about to throw up again.

“How do you figure?” Cisco demanded. “Because from what I can tell the entire freaking city already has my picture.”

“But they don’t have your name,” Wells pointed out. “You seem to keep good company, Mr Ramon; no one’s come forward with your identity yet.”

“What does that have to do with you?” Cisco wanted to know.

“Once they have your name the press are going to be knocking down your door,” Wells explained. “Soon enough they’ll find proof that I didn’t give them, and then it will be too late.”

“It’s _already_  too late!” Cisco snapped.

“Until then,” Wells went on as though Cisco hadn’t spoken, “I can still get Jesse to recant her story.”

Cisco froze. If Jesse recanted then this would all go away. Sure someone was bound to keep digging, but if Cisco was careful they’d find nothing and have to give up. He could go back to his life, back to being the Super IT Department and nothing more. Just ordinary Cisco Ramon.

It had never sounded so enticing. Which, he figured, was probably Wells’ plan. Bastard.

“Jesse already told me she wouldn’t lie,” Cisco argued carefully.

“We’ll discuss _that_  conversation later,” Wells assured him, tone hard and angry. “For the moment all you need to know is that you’re a stranger and I’m her father; if I tell her to do something, she’ll do it.”

“As long as I take the job,” Cisco concluded resignedly.

“Not exactly,” Wells corrected, and there was a note of mean satisfaction in his voice. “The deal’s changed.”

“What?” said Cisco fearfully. “How?”

“I’ve decided that if your vigilante friends want weapons they can buy them like everyone else,” Wells informed him coldly. “No more freelancing, of any kind; whatever you build is mine to sell, end of discussion.”

“That will mean I’m arming every criminal in Starling City!” Cisco protested. “You can’t ask me to put my friends in danger like that!”

“I can,” Wells told him, “I will. You involve my daughter-”

“ _You’re_  the one who involved her!”

“-I involve them. Now, do we have a deal?”

“If I say I need more time are you going to tack on another condition?” Cisco groused.

“You have as much time as you think your friends will give you,” Wells said, and once again Cisco could almost hear the smirk behind his words.

Cisco turned the receiver on his phone away from his mouth a let out a frustrated little sound. “Why is this so important to you?” he demanded once the phone was back in place. “You have a freaking _army_  of brilliant scientists tripping over themselves to please you. What makes me so important?”

From Wells’ end of the phone came a cruel little chuckle. “Mr. Ramon, I’d have thought that was obvious.”

“I guess I’m not as brilliant as you think,” Cisco said sarcastically.

“You saw the press conference,” Wells reminded him, “the one where I announced the Metahuman Awareness Apps. Take a guess as to why you in particular are so interesting to me.”

Cisco swallowed the lump in his throat as cold realization settled heavy in his stomach. “This is about the Flash.”

“This is about the danger posed to Central City by renegades who-”

“You want me to kill the Flash.”

Wells was silent for a moment then, “Not necessarily. Just . . . get him out of the way.”

“You sick son of a bitch,” Cisco breathed.

“Maybe,” Wells admitted carelessly. “Do we have a deal?”

“I’ll think about it,” Cisco said coldly. There was only one possible answer. It would be impossible to give it.

“Tick tock,” said Wells, “you know how much time you have better than I do.”

The line went dead.

Cisco set down his phone, took a few deep, steadying breaths, then stood up and grabbed the beanie he’d been using to hide his hair. He needed to go out, go for a walk or something. It was dangerous, but he needed air. He needed to clear his head, to _think_  about what this would mean. Thankfully Dante was still covering for him, so he was easily able to slip out the back without anyone noticing.

Keeping his head down, Cisco wandered the streets for what felt like hours. He couldn’t imagine not being able to do this, just go out and go for a walk without people pointing and staring. Already he was jumping at every loud noise, and every time someone called out he reflexively ducked his head lower, hoping he hadn’t been noticed. His Cloakpin protected him from the handful of people wearing meta-detection watches, but he knew that without it he’d be screwed. His mind was abuzz with a thousand possibilities like it hadn’t been since he had first discovered his powers, only this time none of them were good.

He couldn’t let it get out what his name was, couldn’t take living under this scrutiny, and worse, making his family do so as well.

If he took the deal, Wells would sell his weapons to every criminal who cared to fight the Green Arrow.

He couldn’t possibly protect everyone he knew, if the supervillains of the city were to learn where he lived and who he loved.

If he took the deal Wells would eventually force him to fight, and maybe kill, the Flash.

Suddenly there was a flash of red and blue lights and the momentary whir of a police siren before a police car pulled out directly in front of him. Cisco didn’t stop to think, just turned on his heel and ran. Behind him he heard the door opening and closing, then a yelled “Stop!” that he ignored. He could hear the cop’s footfalls behind him, and he let out a tiny sob as he realized they were swiftly gaining on him. Before long the cop was right behind him, and he was jerked to a stop by a hand on the back of his shirt before being slammed into a wall.

Cisco blinked at the cop who now had him pinned. “Eddie?”

“Cisco!” Eddie exclaimed, then to Cisco’s complete surprise Eddie caught him up in a hug so tight it lifted him up off his feet.

“Why were you chasing me?” Cisco wanted to know when Eddie put him down.

“Why were you running?” Eddie countered. “I went to your house but you weren’t there, they said you’d gone out.”

“Did you have to chase me down?” Cisco rubbed gingerly at the back of his head where it had connected painfully with the brick wall, and Eddie winced.

“Sorry,” he said, “but you haven’t been to work in two days and you haven’t been answering Joe’s calls. I just thought you might be running away from home too.”

“I’m not running away,” Cisco groused, but when Eddie gestured at the abandoned car Cisco shook his head. “I’m just gonna go home-”

“And I’m going to give you a lift,” Eddie insisted. “We need to talk.”

“No we don’t,” Cisco tried even as he let himself be herded back to the car. “No talking is necessary. I just haven’t been feeling well, so-”

“So you just went AWOL rather than calling in sick?” Eddie asked skeptically. “Get in the car Cisco.”

Grumbling, Cisco complied.

“So,” said Eddie awkwardly once they were underway. “It was you, huh?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cisco muttered.

“Don’t jerk me around Cisco,” Eddie warned. “I know you way too well for that.”

Cisco heaved a deep sigh. “Yeah,” he admitted. “It was me.”

“Why didn’t you just _tell_  us?” Eddie wanted to know, and he sounded not only confused, but genuinely hurt. It made Cisco’s stomach churn with guilt, knowing that Eddie was hurt because of him.

“I didn’t want anybody to know,” Cisco explained. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s a lot of anti-metahuman sentiment in this city. You’re a member of the anti-metahuman task force for god’s sake!”

“ _We_ ,” Eddie corrected, “ _we_ are on the task force. Together. You’ve saved my life and I’ve saved yours. Did you really think this was going to make me think any differently of you?”

“I don’t know,” Cisco admitted in a small voice. “I guess . . . I guess I was just scared.”

“Of me?” Eddie asked in disbelief. “Of Joe? Cisco you never have to be scared of us!”

“You heard Joe at the precinct!” Cisco argued. “Talking about how the meta who defeated Zoom was up to something!”

“That was before we knew it was you,” Eddie countered. “Of course we know you’re not up to something Cisco, the only question I have is why you didn’t do it sooner.”

Cisco went quiet. He’d asked himself that question more than once, why he let himself be talked out of going up against Zoom when people were dying. He didn’t know how to explain it to Eddie, so he said nothing.

“Is it about your brother?” Eddie asked tentatively after a moment. “The one who was . . . who was killed by Zoom?”

“How do you know about him?” Cisco demanded. “I’ve never told you-”

“Joe told me,” Eddie interrupted. “He said that Zoom killed your brother, and that you joined the task force to make sure it didn’t happen to anyone else.”

“Pretty much,” Cisco told him dully.

“So why bother with the task force then?” Eddie asked. “Why not just take out Zoom yourself?”

Cisco bit his lip, trying to think of how to say it. “Someone I trust,” he began, “told me that if I went after Zoom it wouldn’t be justice. That if I had to kill him it would be revenge, and ultimately it would destroy me. He said I wouldn’t be able to help myself, that the urge to kill him would be so strong I wouldn’t be able to resist.”

“But you did,” Eddie protested softly. “You defeated Zoom, but you didn’t kill him. You resisted the urge.”

“I never felt it in the first place,” Cisco confided. “And now I feel like hell, because all those people died while I was hiding from something I never-”

“Hey,” said Eddie, taking his eyes momentarily off the road to look Cisco in the eye. “Don’t think like that. You aren’t to blame for that, Zoom is.”

Shakily, Cisco nodded. “Thanks,” he said, “for saying that. And for not telling anyone about me.”

“Well the whole precinct pretty much knows,” Eddie told him resignedly. “The Captain ordered everyone not to talk to the press, but he’s pretty mad you didn’t tell anyone before.”

“Are you mad?” Cisco asked warily.

“A little,” Eddie confessed. “More that you let us spin our wheels worrying about you for two days than anything.”

Cisco winced. “Sorry about that,” he said.

“I’m just glad you’re okay,” Eddie assured him as they reached Cisco’s street.

When they pulled up beside the Ramon house however, Cisco noticed someone standing on the front stoop. He frowned, trying to place where he’d seen her before, but her back was to him. Then, as Eddie turned off the car and the two of them made to get out she turned, and Cisco was able to see her face.

“Jesse Wells?” Cisco asked in disbelief.

“Hi,” she said nervously, waving a hand awkwardly.

“What are you doing here?” Cisco wanted to know, trying not to sound angry. It wasn’t her fault her dad was a sadist, after all, even if she was too stubborn to see that what she was doing was wrong.

Jesse looked down, then back up at him, biting her lip. “Can we, uh, go inside?”

“Answer my question first,” Cisco insisted.

“I need your help,” she confessed, and there was a note of guilt in her voice.

Cisco raised an eyebrow. “With what?”

Jesse sighed, then seemed to steel herself for what she was about to say. “My dad threw me out of the house and told me not to come back.”

Cisco blinked at her. “What?”

***

Once they had explained to Cisco’s mother that Jesse had been turned out by her parents, Jesse had been swiftly bundled into the Ramon house. She was swept into the kitchen, given a plate of cake, and when Dante came home from work he was immediately set the task of playing something happy on the piano. This also provided his mother an opportunity to tell the Carnegie Hall story, which Jesse withstood admirably given the circumstances. This greatly endeared her to the lady of the house, so she decided immediately that Jesse could sleep on the couch until she found somewhere else to stay, and that both Jesse and Eddie had to stay for dinner. Dante and Cisco were tasked with entertaining their guests while their mother went to the store, finally leaving the four of them alone.

“So, she doesn’t know?” Jesse asked in genuinely confusion after the door had closed.

“About what?” Dante shot back sourly. He still wasn’t entirely sure that Jesse was an innocent pawn in her father’s game, and was eyeing her distrustfully from across the kitchen table.

“That you’re a metahuman,” Jesse chose to address her question to Cisco, shooting nervous glances at Dante as she did so.

“No, she doesn’t know,” Cisco told her, “and I’d like to keep it that way.”

“Why lie to her though?” Jesse wondered. “Why keep it from her?”

“Because I don’t want her to worry,” Cisco replied. “Because I don’t know how she’d react. Because I don’t want to.  A million other reasons that have nothing to do with you.”

Jesse opened her mouth to say something, but at that point Eddie felt it prudent to chime in.

“Why don’t you tell us what happened, Miss Wells,” he said, with all his usual charm.

Jesse seemed to decide that it was safest to address Eddie, so she turned to him. “Everything was normal this morning,” she explained. “Then this little girl came to the door. Security just let her in, it was the strangest thing.”

She shook her head as though to clear it, frowning to herself. “Anyway, my dad and I were having lunch in the dining room when she just walked in. My dad tried to have her thrown out, but she told him to sit down and be quiet, and then he just . . . sat down.”

“Did she have a weapon?” Eddie asked. “Did she threaten either of you in any way?”

“No,” Jesse shook her head in denial, “she just told him what to do and he did it.”

“What did she tell him to do?” Cisco asked, an uneasy feeling growing in his stomach.

Jesse hesitated a moment, then forged on. “She told him that he was her father now, that she was his daughter and that he loved her. Then he just went over to her and picked her up. He hugged her, and kissed her hair, and told her how happy he was to see her.”

“What did she do then?” Eddie prompted.

“She told him to throw me out,” Jesse explained, and there was a hitch in her voice as though she were trying not to cry. “He grabbed me by the arm and dragged me to the door, then he shoved me outside and told me not to come back.”

Eddie and Cisco looked at each other. “Metahuman,” they said in unison.

“I figured,” Jesse said. “That’s why I came to you.”

“Why not just go to the police?” Cisco asked.

Jesse rolled her eyes. “I’m nineteen; it’s not a crime for him to throw me out. What was I supposed to say, some little girl made my dad her brain puppet?”

“Can you describe the girl?” Eddie asked suddenly, drawing both Jesse and Cisco’s attention.

Jesse blinked. “Uh, sure,” she said, “little, maybe nine. She had red hair, in pigtails, and an upturned nose. She had freckles-”

“Like this?” Eddie asked, tapping the screen of his phone a few times and then holding it out for Jesse to see. The screen depicted a little girl, her curly red hair done up in pigtails and a smattering of freckles across her upturned nose.

“That’s her,” Jesse nodded. “Do you know her?”

“No but we’re looking for her,” Eddie explained. “This morning we booked a couple for child endangerment. Real pieces of work, these two; left their nine year old daughter Stephanie by the side of the highway.”

“Yeesh,” Cisco winced. “Why?”

“Dad bought one of those metahuman detection watches,” Eddie explained bitterly. “They found out their daughter was a meta and decided that child protection laws didn’t apply to her anymore.”

“Jesus,” said Dante under his breath. Jesse looked horrified.

“You’re telling me,” Eddie ran a hand through his hair wearily. “Now I have to go arrest a nine year old.”

“No,” said Cisco hurriedly. “It’s too dangerous. What if she takes control of you? If her power is what I think it is, she could make you do anything she wants.”

“What about the Flash?” Jesse proposed. “He could run in and just . . . nab her.”

“And what if she takes control of him?” Cisco argued. “Imagine the power of the Flash as harnessed by a pissed off nine year old. No way, Jay stays out of it.”

“We can’t just sit here and let her take over this man’s life,” Eddie argued.

“I know,” Cisco told him, “which is I why I think I have a plan.”


	5. What You're Made Of

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i was going to have this be the last chapter but it was getting kind of long and there was still a lot i wanted to do, so i decided to add in another chapter as an epilogue.

“How are you feeling?” Cisco asked Jesse the next morning, once the rest of the Ramon household had left for work. Eddie had told Captain Singh that Cisco was trying to stay in until the media circus blew over, and the Captain had consented for Cisco to work on the database from home for the rest of the week.

Jesse shrugged, sitting on the couch and halfheartedly watching TV. “I don’t know,” she confessed. “I mean, I know my dad’s not himself right now, but it still doesn’t feel good.”

“You’ll get him back,” Cisco reassured her, “and we’ll do it without having to hurt Princess.”

Jesse gave him a funny look.

“The name I came up with for Stephanie,” Cisco explained. coming to sit beside her on the couch. “Pretty cool huh?”

“Do metahumans get code names if they aren’t superheroes or supervillains?” Jesse asked with the ghost of a smile.

“Oh yeah,” said Cisco stoutly. “I’ve been going by ‘Vibe’ for years.”

“But you’re a superhero,” Jesse pointed out.

“No, I’m not,” Cisco protested, frowning.

“You defeated Zoom,” Jesse argued. “That makes you a hero.”

Cisco shook his head. “You really don’t get this do you?”

Jesse hesitated, thinking. “I guess not,” she admitted, sounding troubled, and she stared off in to space with a faintly distressed look on her face.

Cisco laughed, startling her out of her reverie.

“What’s so funny?” she demanded.

“You are,” Cisco chuckled. “You don’t have to take it so seriously you know. It doesn’t have to be an absolute, there are gray areas.”

“But-” Jesse began, but at that precise moment Cisco’s phone began to ring. He pulled it out of his pocket to find that it was Joe, calling him for the twentieth time since Cisco had started ignoring him.

Cisco winced. “I really have to take this,” he said apologetically, and Jesse nodded understandingly.

Cisco went to the kitchen, then hit ‘Answer’ and held the phone to his ear. “Joe?” he asked tentatively.

“Thank god,” said Joe, sounding relieved. “Eddie said you were okay, but I had to-”

“I know,” said Cisco, “I’m sorry I’ve been ignoring you.”

“You better be,” said Joe sternly. “You scared the crap out of me kid.”

“I’ll make it up to you?” Cisco offered.

“Nah,” Joe sighed. “I probably scared the crap out of you first, talking about the meta who defeated Zoom being up to something.”

“I knew you’d never hurt me,” Cisco assured him.

“Good,” Joe replied, “because this whole precinct’s ready to close ranks around you kid. The press ain’t getting near you if you don’t wanna talk.”

Cisco smiled into the phone, feeling better than he had since his talk with Jay. “That means a lot.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line, and when Joe spoke again his voice was gentler than it had been. “I’m proud of you Cisco,” he said simply. “Fighting that monster, after what he did to your brother, without killing him? That can’t have been easy.”

“I didn’t do it because of Armando,” Cisco said, and it might have been a half truth but that was enough for him. “I did it because a friend asked me to.”

“This friend,” Joe questioned, “is he the Flash?”

“Nope,” Cisco popped the ‘p’ as he tried to steer the conversation into less painful territory. “The Green Arrow.”

“At some point I’m gonna want that story,” Joe warned. “For now, I’m just glad you’re okay.”

Cisco figured it was probably best not to mention Stephanie, as that plan couldn’t be put into action until later that evening, so he said his goodbyes and ended the call there. Hopefully Eddie would be smart enough to keep Joe out of it, and even though he was a terrible liar he’d at least be able to keep the secret for one day.

“Who’s Armando?” asked a voice from behind Cisco, making him jump.

“Jesse!” he exclaimed, whirling around to face her. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you not to eavesdrop?”

“Sorry,” she said, not sounding sorry at all. “Who’s Armando?”

Cisco sighed, realizing he wasn’t going to get rid of her until she had her answer. “My brother, okay?”

Jesse frowned. “I thought his name was Dante.”

“My other brother,” Cisco explained. “I . . . he died.”

“Oh,” Jesse gasped, looking mortified. “I . . . I’m sorry.”

Cisco nodded and went to make his way past her back out into the living room.

“How did it happen?” Jesse asked, before he was even level with her.

Cisco continued on, not bothering to swerve out of the way to avoid bumping her shoulder. “Zoom,” he said simply.

Jesse trailed after him. “Was he a cop?”

“No,” Cisco groused, “why all the questions?”

“Then why-”

“Because he’s a sadist!” Cisco snapped, glaring at her. “Because he enjoys killing people! Because we saw him, and he doesn’t let people who see him live unless he needs them for something, and he didn’t need us!”

Jesse’s brows knit, and for a moment Cisco thought he’d actually gotten through to her that it was none of her business. Then she spoke, a single word that made him realize exactly what he’d just done.

“We?”

Damn it.

“We,” Cisco repeated, turned away from her to flop onto the couch.

“But . . . you’re alive,” Jesse protested, coming to sit beside him. “Why didn’t Zoom kill you too?”

“He did,” Cisco told her curtly. “It didn’t stick.”

“How does that-”

“Do you know how metahumans are made, _Miss Wells?_ ” Cisco said harshly, turning to face her rather than the TV. “It’s not just exposure to dark matter radiation, oh no. That’s just step one.”

“What’s step two?” Jesse asked apprehensively. She seemed to have finally gotten the message that he was pissed off.

“Death,” Cisco hissed. “You have to die, violently, and then your body uses that damage to reconstruct itself. That’s why I got vibration powers when Zoom stuck his hand through my chest. That’s why I got to wake up, in pain but alive, to find my brother still bleeding on the street beside me!”

“You were at STAR Labs,” Jesse realized, looking horrified.

Cisco nodded. “I took a tour. He wanted to come with me, but he had to work. It’s because of that stupid tour that I’m alive and he’s dead.”

Jesse swallowed. “I . . . I’m sorry,” she said.

Cisco took a deep breath. “Yeah, well, it’s your dad’s fault not yours,” he said grudgingly. “Don’t beat yourself up about it.”

Jesse opened her mouth to say something, but at that moment both their attention was taken by the words “Harrison Wells” coming from the TV.

“ _. . . Harrison Wells has called yet another press conference, this one to take place in his home_ ,” reported the newscaster.  _“It is as of yet unclear what exactly he will be announcing, but the subject of the announcement is reportedly his new line of Metahuman Awareness Apps_.”

“Oh no,” Jesse breathed.

“It’s Stephanie,” Cisco realized, turning to Jesse in horror.

“What are we going to do?” Jesse demanded fearfully.

Cisco dug his phone out of his pocket. “Okay,” he said, opening his contacts, “new plan.”

***

Being that this announcement was to take place in the Wells home, the turnout was a bit smaller than the last two times. Only a dozen reporters and a total of three cameras were present, aimed at a podium that had been erected in the front hallway. The door was closed behind everyone, leaving the space feeling crowded, a feeling which wasn’t alleviated by the dozen or so armed guards placed around the podium and covering all the entrances, as though Dr. Wells were expecting some kind of interruption. No one had forgotten the Flash’s appearance at the Metahuman Awareness App announcement, so the guards went largely unremarked upon.

Once the cameras were set up and everyone was in position, Dr. Wells came out to stand behind the podium. Following him were two additional guards and, curiously, a little girl of about nine years of age. She wore an elegant pink dress, and her mass of red curls were piled artfully atop her head. She held Dr. Wells’ hand as he led her out towards the podium, and her sharp eyes swept the crowd critically when he let go.

Apparently satisfied, she turned to Dr. Wells. “Tell them,” she instructed in a high voice.

Dr. Wells turned to the crowd and opened his mouth to speak.

At that precise moment a flash of gold lightning zipped through the crowd, blowing hair and papers in every direction. It dashed up to the podium and, before anyone could react, both it and Dr. Wells had vanished.

“No!” cried the little girl, staring after them. “Come back! He needs to say it, it has to be him!”

Dr. Wells and the Flash, for presumably it had been him, had disappeared out the back of the house, so no one was focused on the front entrance behind them. Their attention swiftly returned to that door however when a blast sounded from outside it, as though someone had set off a firework next to the door. A second blast followed it, this time visibly shaking the door and the wall around it, and then a third blast finally blew the door wide open.

Standing outside were two children, a girl who looked a little older than the one accompanying Dr. Wells and a boy who was perhaps a little younger. The girl was dressed in a puffy blue coat, the hood up over her mousy hair and her eyes a luminous blue that bordered on unnatural. The boy wore denim shorts and a red shirt with the sleeves torn off, matching his vibrant orange hair and red sunglasses nicely.

“Your days are numbered!” called the little boy, pointing at the red haired girl.

“You’re so embarrassing,” groused the girl with blue eyes.

At that point the guards nearest the door seemed to regain their wits. “Freeze!” one of them called, he and three other pointing guns at the two children.

“If you insist,” said the girl sweetly, then pointed a finger gun at the guard who had spoken. Immediately his gun froze solid, and when he dropped it in surprise it shattered upon hitting the ground.

“Guards, get her!” screamed the little girl who had accompanied Dr. Wells.

Two of the guards nearest the pair of meta-children advanced on the little girl, but the boy stepped into their path.

“Oh no you don’t!” he yelled, and from his outstretched hand sprang a ball of flames. The fire hit the floor at their feet, but fizzled out almost immediately, doing little more than forcing them back a few steps.

“All of you!” screamed the little girl by the podium, voice rising in pitch along with her temper. “Get them out of here!”

The various reporters and camera operators, who had turned their attention to the ongoing fight and were now covering it live, immediately abandoned their work to swarm towards the two children.

“Sorry about this,” said the girl with ice powers, before aiming both hands at the ground. A creeping wave of ice swept over the floor, and when it made contact with a person’s shoes it immediately froze them in place. Within moments, the entire room of news professionals were rooted to the spot.

“Get them!” howled the red haired girl. “Get them, get-”

She stopped there, but only because a cloth had been placed over her mouth. Behind her appeared a boy, roughly her own age, as though from thin air. She struggled as he held the cloth over her mouth, but eventually she went still and sagged against him.

“Perfect!” came a voice from behind the door, and out into view stepped the now familiar figure of the man Jesse Wells claimed had defeated Zoom.

This was enough to shock a few of the reporters back to their sense.

“Are you the man who took Zoom’s powers?” asked one.

“Can we have your name?” called another.

“Do you have any plans to continue superhero work?” demanded a third.

“Yes, no, and not really,” groused the man, carefully picking his way around the frozen floor with the two children trailing after him. “Snow Angel, if you could?”

The little girl waved a hand, and immediately the ice on the floor melted away.

The boy with the red hair made a face. “I could have done that.”

When the man reached the boy who had turned invisible he took the limp form of the little girl into his arms and lifted her up.

“Nothing to see here folks,” he called, “you can all-”

It was hard to say why the guard nearest the podium chose that moment to act. Maybe it was the fact that the man had picked the little girl up. Maybe it was that he had only just then recovered. Maybe it was instinct, or reflexes, or sheer confusion, but at that precise moment the guard closest to the gaggle of metahumans raised his gun and fired.

Reflexively the man threw out a hand toward the guard. From his palm emanated a blast of vibrating energy, strong enough to send the guard flying into the far wall. The bullets stopped in mid-air and clattered harmlessly to the ground.

The man hesitated a moment, then turned abruptly around to look at the crowd. Every camera in the hallway was pointed at him.

“Well,” he said, on live television. “Fuck.”

***

It took Cisco a while to get Tommy, Alice, Billy and Stephanie to the hospital where Jay had taken Wells. Just getting out of the house was a chore, and Cisco had been forced to emanate a low level vibration blast in a full circle around the group just to get back through the crowd. Every news crew in the place had then proceeded to try and box them in with their vans, in an attempt to force Cisco to stay for an interview, and it was only by driving over the lawn had they managed to get out at all.

“Vultures,” Cisco hissed as he drove down the private road towards the main street.

“Tell me about it,” grumbled Alice as she fastened the voice-canceling collar Cisco had designed around Stephanie’s neck.

“Do they want to talk to us too?” Tommy asked, looking out the back window with interest.

“Why don’t we give it a few more years before you make your formal debut Fireball?” Cisco suggested, half amused despite himself.

Once they had reached the hospital and Stephanie Kingsley had been admitted to recover from her chloroforming, Jesse joined them in the private room Stephanie had been afforded. She was more than happy to listen to the children babble excitedly about their adventure while Cisco secured the room and talked quietly with Jay about keeping Wells on the other end of the building while he recovered from his stint as a brain puppet. Once Dante’s shift ended he joined them, bringing with him a box of cupcakes for the kids to eat while they waited to be picked up.

Jax was the first person to find them.

“Did I do good?” Tommy asked, running up to greet him.

“You did great,” Jax assured him, scooping the little boy up in his arms. “I saw you on the news. Gray’s gonna be so proud.”

“Where _is_ Stein?” Cisco asked, sitting with Jesse and Dante at the small table where the cupcakes were laid out.

“Distracting Clarissa,” Jax explained, a touch of disapproval in his tone. “He knew she’d never let Tommy do this, so he lied to her.”

“She’ll find out from the news,” Cisco warned.

“I think that’s why Gray picked such an expensive restaurant,” Jax laughed, then turned to Tommy. “Don’t worry, me and Gray are gonna show you a few tricks. Your technique needs a lot of work.”

After Jax and Tommy had left, Jesse finally asked the questions Cisco had seen burning in her eyes since Jax had walked in.

“How do you know them?” she demanded. “Did you know them before you were all metahumans? Do families always get the same powers? How is Jax related to-”

“Jax isn’t related to Tommy,” Cisco cut her off. “He and Dr. Stein, and Stein’s wife Clarissa, are Tommy’s guardians. His mother couldn’t take care of him, what with the type of powers he has, so she just comes to visit him every day.”

“Who decided that?” Jesse wanted to know.

“I did,” Cisco explained. “I had a vibe that Tommy would burn his house down. I stopped it, but he couldn’t stay there. Jax and Dr. Stein have the same type of powers that he does, so they agreed to take care of him.”

“Is that how you normally handle metahuman kids?” Jesse asked.

Cisco nodded at the door to the room, and Jesse turned around to see Caitlin lingering awkwardly in the doorway.

“Caitlin!” called Alice, running to her.

“Alice!” exclaimed Caitlin as she scooped the little girl up.

“Are you her sister?” Jesse asked skeptically. Caitlin didn’t show it, but Cisco knew she was inwardly preening; she hated being mistaken for Alice’s mother.

Caitlin shook her head. “Just her guardian,” she explained, hugging Alice close. “We just happened to have the same powers, so Cisco placed us together.”

“She was just what Snow Angel needed,” Cisco chimed in.

“And you were just what I needed,” Caitlin booped Alice’s nose, making the little girl giggle.

Caitlin stayed long enough to have a cupcake, but then she and Alice left. After a while there came the tap of a cane outside the door and Billy, who had been sitting shyly in a corner, suddenly emerged from thin air to run up and greet the man in dark sunglasses who tapped his way into the room.

“Billy,” said Matt fondly, his hand going to the boy’s hair as he was hugged around the knees.

“Hey Matt,” called Cisco, and Matt nodded in his general direction.

“Matt, this is Jesse,” Billy introduced them, tugging Matt’s hand toward Jesse until she reached out and took it.

“Pleasure to meet you,” Matt said to the air above Jesse’s left shoulder, smiling broadly.

“A blind guy with an invisible kid,” Jesse noted, with all her usual tact. “Sounds like a perfect fit.”

“We get by,” said Matt modestly.

“He’s much better than my last guardian,” Billy assured her.

“Dr. Light,” Cisco answered Jesse’s unspoken question once Matt and Billy had left. At her shocked expression he looked down. “I never said I’ve never made mistakes.”

“How many kids have you placed in metahuman foster care?” Jesse asked with a pained expression.

“Dozens,” Cisco answered quietly. “Kids get abandoned, thrown out, they accidentally hurt their parents, all kinds of stuff. Then they have nowhere to go.”

“Now that the Apps are out there will probably be more,” Jesse realized. “Princess is just the first.”

Dante nodded. “Kids who’ve stayed hidden up to now,” he predicted. “Not all of them, but enough. Their parents will find out and then they’ll be out on the street, and it’s only a matter of time before they start using their powers to survive.”

“Like Princess did,” Jesse finished for him.

Cisco looked over at the little girl still asleep in her hospital bed, one tiny hand zip-tied to the rail. “She just wanted to go home.”

“Jesse,” came a voice from the door, and they all looked over to see Wells standing in the doorway, wild-eyed and desperate.

“Where’s Jay?” Cisco demanded in alarm, as Jesse stood up to face her father.

“Jesse, thank god,” Wells continued as though Cisco hadn’t spoken, stumbling towards her. Jesse recoiled in disgust, and Wells looked absolutely heartbroken. “You have to believe me,” he insisted, “it wasn’t me, it was that _thing._ I’ll have her head for this, oh Jesse-”

At that point Jesse interrupted his tirade with a sound smack across the face.

“Do not call her a thing,” Jesse ordered harshly, when her father had been stunned into silence.

Dante came up behind Wells and tapped him on the shoulder. Bemused, Wells turned to look at him, and Dante took the opportunity to punch him in jaw. Wells went reeling backward, barely managing to catch himself on Stephanie’s hospital bed.

“That’s for trying to blackmail my brother,” Dante spat.

“You’re angry at _me?_ ” Wells demanded in disbelief, straightening up. “When that thing-”

“If you call her a thing again I’ll do a lot worse than that,” said a voice from behind him. Wells turned, along with the rest of the room, to see a short, waifish woman with dirty blonde hair in a loose braid stride confidently into the room. She wore a man’s hunting jacket, weathered jeans and large boots, and she went immediately to sit on the bed beside Stephanie.

“Hey Riley!” said Cisco brightly. “Glad you could make it.”

“I’m glad you called,” Riley answered, unfastening the noise canceling device and patting Stephanie lightly on the cheek. “Time to wake up, honey.”

“No!” called Jesse as Stephanie blinked her eyes open. “She’ll-”

“I know what she can do,” Riley said calmly. “Don’t worry.”

Stephanie looked blearily around, then noticed that she was zip-tied to the railing. She panicked, tugging at her wrist, until Riley took hold of her other hand.

“Hey,” she cooed, “it’s okay, you’re safe. No one’s going to hurt you.”

Stephanie turned her gaze on Wells. “Get me out of here!” she ordered fearfully.

Wells moved toward the bed, but immediately Riley turned to look him in the eye. “You don’t need to listen to her,” she said, and her voice took on a strange, layered quality, as though several people were talking at once. “You make your own decisions.”

Wells blinked, clearly dazed, but stayed where he was.

Stephanie looked at Riley in wonder. “You can do it too?” she breathed.

“You have the same powers!” Jesse exclaimed in delight. “Can you tell me, why didn’t she try to control the children? It’s not because they’re metahumans, so-”

“Children are harder to control,” Riley said, turning to glance at Jesse over her shoulder, then turned her attention back to Stephanie. “I bet you can’t do it yet, right?”

“You can?” Stephanie asked excitedly. “Can you teach me?”

“Yep,” Riley grinned, “but I’m also going to teach you how to use your powers responsibly. I’m going to take care of you for a while, okay?”

Stephanie looked around nervously. “I want to go home,” she said softly.

“I know,” Riley told her sadly, “but home’s not safe for you anymore. You’re going to come home with me, at least for right now.”

At that point Wells seemed to regain his sense. “She belongs in a prison,” he snarled.

Riley turned again to look at him, eyes hard and full of rage. “Say that again and I’ll make you bite your tongue clean off,” she hissed.

Wells shut his mouth.

“You wouldn’t be in this situation if you hadn’t torn her family apart,” Cisco pointed out bitterly. “If you’d just tried to _help_  the metas rather than profiting off people’s fear she wouldn’t have needed to control you!”

“I was going to let him go,” Stephanie piped up shyly. “I just wanted him to tell my dad that his watch doesn’t work. Then I could go home.”

“Oh honey,” Riley crooned, but Stephanie pushed her away.

“I want to go home,” she said shakily, tears forming in her eyes. “I want to go to my house and sleep in my bed. I want my mom to tell me a I’m special and for my dad to call me his little Princess.”

She turned to Wells, who recoiled, but tears were flowing freely down her face now. “Please,” she sobbed, “please, _please_  just tell my dad the watch was wrong!”

Riley opened her mouth to say something, but Cisco held up a hand. As the rest of the room watched he dragged his chair over to Stephanie’s bed, and Riley moved down so that Cisco could sit beside her.

“Can I tell you a secret?” Cisco asked quietly, wishing there weren’t so many people in the room.

Stephanie hesitated, then nodded.

“You may have heard about this,” he began, “but I’m the guy who beat Zoom.”

Wells made a noise of protest, but Cisco glanced back to see Jesse glaring him down.

“People think I did it because of my brother,” he went on, “because Zoom took him from me. The truth is though, that’s not the reason.”

“What’s the reason?” Stephanie asked curiously.

Cisco swallowed. “My brother was always my mom’s favorite,” he explained. “When Zoom took him and not me, I felt like I’d betrayed her, like she’d rather have him back than have me.”

“That’s not true,” Dante said, horrified, but Cisco forged on.

“I shouldn’t be here,” he said, “but I am because I’m a metahuman. I’ve spent so long trying to prove that I deserve to live, to have these powers, when my brother isn’t here. The truth is, I beat Zoom because I didn’t want to feel worthless anymore.”

“I don’t think you’re worthless,” Stephanie said quietly.

“Thanks,” Cisco smiled, “but if there’s one thing this has all taught me it’s that you can’t define your worth by what other people think of you. Your parents left you, Stephanie. Tell me: are you worth more than that?”

Stephanie hesitated, and for a moment the whole room watched with baited breath as she look down at her hands. Then she looked back up at Cisco.

“Yes,” she said decisively, “I am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was going to have more jay in this chapter but then i decided to use the metahuman kids and there wasn't much room for him. he'll have more screen time in the epilogue.
> 
> special thanks to hedgi for tossing around ideas for metahuman children with me! let us know what you think of them!


	6. Epilogue

Cisco and Jay traded blows mechanically, going through a sequences of dodges and blocks they’d mastered weeks ago. Jay would aim a punch at Cisco’s gut and Cisco would block, stepping back to give himself room to do so. The next hit would come from Cisco, reclaiming the ground he had lost and forcing Jay back a step as he blocked two blows in quick succession. 

Then Jay found an opening in Cisco’s defenses. He aimed a punch at his head that couldn’t be easily blocked, so Cisco opted to doge instead, swerving around and grabbing Jay’s wrist to divert the blow. While he had hold of the other man’s arm he aimed a kick at Jay’s stomach, and was satisfied when it actually connected. Jay huffed as the wind was knocked out of him, and he had to use his speed to right himself to avoid falling over. His next punch was lightning fast and Cisco’s powers reacted before he did, firing a vibration blast at Jay’s chest to slow the movement of his arm to a more manageable pace.

“Stop!” called Oliver’s voice, interrupting their bout. Cisco and Jay turned and looked at him guiltily, stepping pointedly out of each other’s space.

“How many times do I have to tell you this isn’t a fight?” Oliver asked. “This is about learning to move around each other, not trying to gain an advantage. You cannot use your powers together if you’re just going to be getting in each other’s way.”

“It was my fault,” Jay insisted. “I saw an opening and I exploited it.”

“I’m the one who hit you,” Cisco argued. “It’s my-”

“I don’t care whose fault it is,” Oliver told them firmly. “If you’re going to fight on the same field you need to learn to work together.

“Jay,” Oliver turned to him, “If you can’t learn to work around Cisco’s powers you’re going to end up getting hit, and no offense but you’re actually not that strong a fighter. You rely too much on your speed, without it you’re a sitting duck.”

Jay nodded his understanding, looking grim.

“Cisco,” Oliver continued, turning to look at him, “your powers have a hair trigger; you need to learn better control, stop letting them off the leash every time you get spooked.”

“I’ll work on it,” Cisco promised.

Oliver sighed. “I think that’s enough for today,” 

The Green Arrow had graciously agreed to spend a few days here and there in Central City, training the Flash and Vibe to work as a team. It was slow going, but Jay and Cisco were steadily improving, and their hard work was paying off on their nighttime exploits. Already the city was raving about it’s new Super Star Tag Team, and they were even tentatively beginning to go into fights against tougher metas together.

Sadly, not even Cisco could keep tabs on every meta in the city, so a handful of those that had just been trying to keep their heads down didn’t receive Cloakpin Devices to shield them from the Metahuman Awareness Apps. Some had fled, but some were lashing out, and Cisco considered those his responsibility.

“I need a drink,” Cisco announced tiredly. “Either of you game?”

“I have plans with Felicity,” Oliver said, a slight smile crossing his stoic face.

Jay shrugged. “My speed will be gone for a few hours. I’ll take the opportunity to get drunk.”

Cisco grinned excitedly in anticipation.

***

Joining them for the Get Jay Sloshed Party were Eddie and Dante, with whom Cisco had made plans previously.

“I think Eddie wanted it to be a date when he asked me,” Cisco confided, “but I didn’t know what to say, so Dante invited himself a long.”

“Did Eddie mind?” Jay wanted to know. “I could come up with an excuse for me and Dante to leave.”

“Eddie’s too much of an extrovert to mind more people to drink with,” Cisco told him. “He’ll have a lot of fun getting smashed with someone who doesn’t do it often. Plus I think he realized I wasn’t really ready.”

It wasn’t that Cisco didn’t like Eddie, or that he was opposed to the idea of a date, but what with everything else going on in his life he wasn’t really in a place where a relationship was a good idea. He was still new to the whole superhero thing, and if word got out that he had someone in his life they were bound to become a target. He didn’t think he could protect Eddie, from scrutiny or from the inevitable supervillains, so it was best not to go there right now.

They met Eddie and Dante at the bar, where they’d already staked out a table and were talking animatedly together. Eddie seemed excited to see Cisco, but no less excited to see Jay, so Cisco figured he’d be alright. It turned out that Jay was a complete lightweight, although he was quite enthusiastic about it, and before long Jay was leaning on his elbow to stay upright and everyone else at the table was pleasantly buzzed.

“How’s Stephanie doing?” Eddie asked after a particularly long sip.

“She’s okay,” Cisco told him. “She still misses home, but she’s coping.”

“Poor kid,” Jay shook his head. “She’s been through way too much for a nine year old.”

“Riley knows a thing about going through too much for your age,” Cisco assured him. “Plus I put her in contact with Hartley.”

“Oh not your ex-boyfriend again,” Dante moaned.

“Ex-boyfriend?” Eddie repeated dubiously.

“Hartley Rathaway,” Cisco explained. “He trains therapy rats. He’ll probably give one to Stephanie, something she can use to practice talking to people without compelling them.”

“You’ll _owe_  him though,” Dante complained.

“He’s not that heartless,” Cisco groused.

“So, where are Stephanie and Riley living now?” Eddie tactfully steering the conversation away from Hartley.

"I think they went to Starling City for a while,” Cisco told him, “until the media forget about Stephanie’s appearance at the press conference.”

“You think she’ll ever live it down?” Dante wondered.

“It’s never too late to change,” Jay said blearily. “If she uses her powers for good, they’ll forgive her.”

“Wells won’t,” Dante pointed out.

“If Wells messes with her I think Jesse will have something to say about it,” Cisco speculated. “You know she’s started visiting the metahuman kids? And she’s moved out of the house, that’s for damn sure.”

“Good for her,” Jay gave a sleepy smile. “She’s a good kid, she deserves better.”

“She's a force of nature,” Dante laughed. “I bet she’d be a superhero if she could.”

“Yeah,” Cisco agreed. “If she could.”

***

Electrocution, according to Jesse’s research, was a very unpleasant way to die. She needed it to do as much damage to her body as possible, and that meant a high voltage DC current, but the muscle contractions could potentially break bones and that wasn’t the kind of damage she was going for. If all went well then it wouldn’t matter, but that was only if this worked.

Ultimately she decided there had to be another way.

She toyed with several options after that. Various drugs existed to boost physical performance, and all of them were lethal in high enough doses, but they weren’t specific enough for Jesse’s taste. It was impossible to predicted exactly what effect they would have. Too imprecise.

At long last she settled on the simplest possible method. The body’s own fight or flight reflex was the greatest possible performance enhancer, and because the body was built to withstand it the process carried very little risk of unforeseen side-effects.

Operating on this logic, Jesse gathered the necessary materials from STAR Labs and went to the hospital. Regardless of whether this worked or not, she’d need medical attention before it was over. She went to the walk-in clinic and complained of heart palpitations, and was promptly shown to an empty exam room and told that the doctor would be in to see her shortly.

Once she had been left alone, Jesse pulled out the syringe full of pure adrenaline and slammed it into her heart.

Just before she lost consciousness, Jesse thought she might have felt a crackle of lightning across her skin.

Perfect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to hedgi for giving me the idea for hartley giving stephanie a therapy rat


End file.
